The Gimlet Eye qotlc-3

by James Roy

  The Gimlet Eye

  ( Quentaris:Quest of the lost city - 3 )

  James Roy

  James Roy

  The Gimlet Eye

  PROLOGUE

  The Archon was dying. In his palace, beside the Square of the People and in the shadow of the great mainmast and sails that towered over Quentaris, the old man lay breathing his last.

  The room was silent, save for the deep, sighing, gasping breaths of the man who had spent so much of his life serving Quentaris. His nephew Florian Eftangeny sat by his side, his plump face devoid of emotion. It wasn’t Florian’s way to show anything as weak as sadness. In fact, the only emotions he’d ever been known to show were anger, envy, bitterness, arrogance and occasionally fear. None of the good emotions, like love, or empathy, or gentleness.

  ‘You may touch him, my lord,’ the court physician said in a whisper.

  Florian grunted. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘He’s in pain, my lord. He might like you to hold his hand.’

  Florian turned his head slightly. ‘In pain, you say?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Then ease it!’ Spittle flew as Florian shouted at the physician. ‘In the name of all that’s magical, man, give him something to relieve him of it!’

  The physician swallowed hard, gave a quick nod, and scurried out of the room.

  ‘Melpeth,’ Florian snapped, pressing his fingertips to his temples.

  The servant lad came over, bowing his head low. ‘Yes, my lord?’

  ‘Melpeth, I’m still waiting for the magicians.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Melpeth murmured, quickly backing away with his head still bowed. Then he too turned and scuttled out.

  ‘Idiots,’ Florian said. ‘I’m surrounded by idiots.’

  ‘Why do you even want the magicians here?’ asked a voice from the shadows that gathered amongst the wall hangings on the far side of the room. ‘What do you think Stelka and her brood of gibberers are going to do for him now?’

  ‘They need to see this, Janus,’ Florian replied, flapping his hand towards the tiny, shrunken man in the bed. ‘They need to see that it’s gone too far now, even for them. They need to know that there’s nothing that even they can do. That…’

  ‘That it’s your turn?’ Janus stepped forward into the light, eyes still hidden by the dark triangular shadows of his brow. ‘Florian, I’m only saying this because I’m your friend. I wouldn’t say this to just anyone.’

  Florian looked up. ‘What’s that? What do you need to say to me?’

  Janus walked across the cold marble floor on silent feet, stopped in front of Florian, and dropped to one knee. ‘My lord,’ he said. ‘It is your time.’

  Florian’s eyes darted towards the Archon’s face. ‘Janus! He’s not even dead yet!’

  ‘Florian. You know that there is the power that is assumed, and the power that is taken, and they’re not equal. They never have been, never will be.’

  ‘Of course I know this – we studied the same texts,’ Florian snapped.

  ‘If your uncle dies now – if he simply stops breathing – you will assume great power. You’ll be the leader of Quentaris…’

  ‘I get the feeling that you haven’t quite finished that sentence,’ Florian said.

  ‘Indeed. But if you take that power, your grip will be that much the stronger. The prophecies are very clear, my friend. If he dies, you simply oversee. But if you act now, you rule!’

  ‘I rule.’ Florian bit his lip in thought as he glanced toward the door. ‘So it must be now?’

  ‘It must.’

  ‘Very well,’ Florian said at last. ‘Watch the door.’

  ‘You’ve made the right choice,’ Janus said, standing and going to the door. ‘All right, I’m standing guard.’

  Florian stood, and reaching behind the Archon’s head, he tugged at one of the thick pillows. He gripped it with both hands. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The prophecies,’ Janus said.

  ‘Yes, the prophecies.’ He looked down at the face of his uncle. The old man’s eyelids flickered open, and as their eyes suddenly met, the Archon’s gaze widened, ever so slightly.

  ‘Do it now, Florian, before the doctor comes back,’ Janus prompted, his voice a hiss. ‘There’s no time to waste!’

  ‘I know.’ As Florian tightened his grip on the pillow, he saw the slightest shake of the Archon’s head. Perhaps he even heard a tiny whisper escape the old man’s thin, pale lips – a whisper that sounded like, ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘I must,’ said Florian. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle, but it has to be this way.’

  Meanwhile, unseen in the darkest corner of the room, hidden by a tall-backed chair, a young boy watched with wide, terrified, disbelieving eyes. What he saw reached deep inside him, to the part of his mind that formed words – a part that was only now learning to speak freely again – and strangled it like a thickleberry vine entangling an ancient ruin.

  A MOST STRANGE INVITATION

  Tab Vidler sighed and dumped one last shovelful of dung into the bucket. It was like deja vu. Here she was, a one-time Dung Brigader, who had become an apprentice magician, who was now back to shoveling animal waste into buckets. It didn’t seem fair, even though working as a farmhand at the Nor’city Farm was a little less demeaning than traipsing around the streets picking up warm piles of animal droppings.

  ‘When you’re done there, you can get started on the stables,’ called Bendo Lizac as he crossed courtyard for the kitchen. ‘The donkeys need more straw.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Tab answered wearily. Then, as if for old times’ sake, she closed her eyes and went probing with her mind for one of the donkeys. Something went chink in her head, and she was suddenly looking down at the floor of one of the stalls. A long, furry grey muzzle stretched before her field of vision.

  ›››Forgive me

  She directed the donkey to turn its head, and saw that there was ample straw in the corner of the stall. And in the next, and the next.

  ›››Thank you, my friend

  ‘Why are you still standing there?’ Bendo asked as he crossed back over the courtyard, biting the end off a boiled egg. ‘I told you to give the donkeys more straw.’

  ‘They’ve got plenty,’ she replied.

  Bendo paused, turned and walked towards her, slowly, menacingly. He stopped when their chests were almost touching, and glared down his nose at her. A couple of flecks of egg were stuck to his bottom lip. ‘Listen, you, I don’t pay you to talk back – I pay you to do as I say!’ he snarled.

  ‘Yes, sir, I’ll do it straight away,’ Tab murmured. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Better.’ Bendo turned and stomped away, and Tab sighed again.

  ‘You don’t pay me to talk back? No – you don’t pay me at all,’ she muttered.

  ‘I heard that.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Tab picked up the dung bucket and carried it over to the large pile in the corner of the yard. When its contents had been deposited, she headed into the stables. Even if she didn’t top up the straw, she had to be seen to be doing as she was told.

  The last few months had been… well, interesting. Since the Archon had died, so much had changed, and not just for Tab. Quentaris was hardly the same place any more. It was still floating in the sky, drifting almost aimlessly over forests, oceans, deserts, mountains. From time to time and without warning a vortex would appear, and the city would turn and sail straight for it, its vast sails cracking and flapping far above the rooftops. The swirling, black funnel of darkness would loom larger, and with barely enough time to get the animals inside to safety or to take the laundry in from the line, the shuddering and rumbling would begin. And a short time later, the landscape would
have changed to different forests, oceans, deserts, mountains. Then the repairs around the city would begin again.

  There had been a time when she was part of all of that, back before it became quite so random. As an apprentice magician, she had been close to the Navigators’ Guild. She’d even come to count Chief Navigator Stelka as a friend, and had often been at the gatherings when the next vortex had been sought, found and entered. But since the Archon had died and his nephew Florian had taken over, there seemed little rhyme nor reason to the vortexes they passed through, and the worlds into which they led.

  But then, over time, and as the Navigators were demoted one by one, there did appear to be a logical explanation for the worlds to which they travelled. The thing was, Quentaris had become no better than the dreaded and despised Tolrush. Quentaris was now little more than a pirate city, sending out scouting parties, then raiding parties, before heading into the next vortex to do it again. Except no one that Tab or any of her friends spoke to seemed to agree with what was happening, so who was in the scouting parties? Who was following the orders of Florian?

  Everyone Tab had grown to know and trust within the upper echelons of the Quentaran government had either been demoted, corrupted or in some cases, had simply vanished. Most of the magicians had disappeared. Their former leader Stelka was in a dungeon somewhere, charged with breaking some ancient law that had never been removed from the Constitution – something to do with pigs and sheep sharing a pen, or so it was rumoured. The former Quartermaster Dorissa and the other magicians had been exiled to a dark, haunted corner of the city, and Captain Verris hadn’t been seen for months. Tab had enquired after him, and was given several different versions: a landward scouting expedition that had turned bad; an uprising in one of the rougher parts of the city that had led to several of the authorities dying, including Verris; one person had even whispered to Tab that he’d died of a broken heart after his favourite horse was lost overboard. All Tab knew was that even as a one-time pirate, Verris would never have approved of what the new Quentaris had become.

  At least she still had her friends, she mused. Philmon’s work as a skysailer was more hectic than ever, now that Quentaris was constantly plunging through vortexes. He complained about the number of repairs required, but as Tab always reminded him, at least he wasn’t shoveling anything. Amelia, who had been well on her way to qualifying as a magician was serving drinks in a tavern now, and Torby… well, she still visited Torby from time to time, but he wasn’t the same. He was a shell, still haunted by the effects of his torture at the hands of Krull and his Tolrushian henchmen. He’d seemed to improve for a while, after the equens had been to Quentaris, and had even begun to grow in confidence with his magic. But in the weeks and months following the death of the Archon, he’d worsened once more, and no one was quite sure why. Nowadays he lay in a never-ending state of staring awakedness on his bed at the end of a row in the Grendelmire Infirmary. He just lay there, day after day, occasionally twitching, but never speaking. With her friends, Tab would visit him when she could, but they always left wondering if he even knew who they were.

  And then there was Fontagu. For a time, just before the Archon’s death, Fontagu’s star had been on the rise. His underhandedness forgotten or forgiven, perhaps both, he’d performed in several plays at the New Paragon, the rebuilt version of the famous old playhouse that had once held pride of place in the bustling eastern end of the city. The original Paragon had burnt to the ground during the battle with the Tolrushians. But it had been rebuilt, and was, for a time, back better than ever.

  Fontagu had been in his element. He’d starred in a number of plays, had directed one or two, and had even started writing his own. But then the Archon died, and the bottom fell out of Fontagu’s world. It was a complete mystery to him, how someone so handsome, so damned talented, could go from the most celebrated Simesian actor of his age to a nobody, twice!

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he’d said to Tab, often. ‘Me! Me!’

  ‘You were too close,’ Tab replied on one of these occasions. ‘All that business with the equens, and the herdsfolk – you were a part of all that. It’s not your fault, though. Florian just wanted to clean out everyone who had anything to do with the old days.’

  ‘A new broom?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Which is exactly what I need if I’m going to keep doing my job at the Flegis Arms. Sweeping! Me, sweeping the floor of some commoner’s drinking hole! It’s an outrage, Tab!’

  ‘You could try being a bit more grateful.’

  ‘Grateful?’

  ‘Yes! Amelia didn’t have to help you get a job at her tavern. She put in a good word for you, and now you’ve got work. If you think about it, you’ll realise that it could be worse.’

  ‘How?’ Fontagu looked up at her with the most pathetic hang-dog expression. ‘How could it be worse?’

  ‘You could be locked away in a dungeon, like Stelka. Or exiled in Skulum Gate, like Dorissa and Moreon and Aylia and all those other magicians. Or you could be missing altogether, like Verris.’

  Fontagu grunted. ‘At least if you ask anyone where Stelka is, they can tell you. But ask anyone where that great thespian, that arteur Fontagu Wizroth the Third is, and they'll offer a one-word reply: “Who?”‘

  Tab had to smile then. Once her friend got into one of these moods, it was almost impossible to lift him out of it.

  Tab chuckled to herself as she fluffed up a stack of straw in one of the stalls. If there was one thing that had never changed – would never change – in Quentaris, it was Fontagu.

  ‘When you’ve done that, you can see to the shickins,’ Bendo said from the door. ‘They need fresh water. And check for eggs.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tab replied. Then, once Bendo had left, she muttered, ‘There’ll be no eggs, you idiot – they’re roosters.’

  She picked up the water pail from near the pump and headed over to the shickin pen. A little larger than a turkey, and at least twice as ugly, the shickins had been taken during a recent raid. All sorts of weirdness came into Quentaris after these raids, and it was all very well for Florian, tucked safely away in his new palace. If anything dangerous or infectious was brought aboard, he’d get plenty of warning, mainly in the form of common Quentarans dropping dead. It had only happened a couple of times, but he hadn’t seemed too bothered. In fact, he’d been entirely silent on the matter.

  ‘Were there any eggs?’ Bendo asked, peering into the pen.

  ‘No, there weren’t any eggs,’ Tab replied. ‘These shickins are… not laying yet.’

  Bendo scratched his head. ‘I don’t understand. I was told by that man at the market that they would be terrific layers.’

  ‘You’re right, it is weird,’ Tab said. ‘Give them time.’

  ‘But how much time?’ Bendo leaned forward and growled at the birds. ‘Eggs out of you, or you’ll end up in a broth.’

  ‘You tell 'em, sir,’ Tab said.

  Bendo scowled at her, trying to work out whether she was mocking him. ‘Yes, well,’ he said at last. ‘When you’ve finished with the shickins, you’ve got a visitor.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘That lad who’s always hanging around – the skysailor. Don’t be too long. I’m watching you closely.’

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ Tab replied, letting herself out of the pen and latching the gate. ‘And I’ve heard that shickins lay better if you sing to them.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes, everyone knows that,’ she said. Then she dropped the pail by the pump and ran to the gate at the far end of the courtyard.

  ‘Hey, Tab,’ said Philmon. ‘Sorry to come here while you’re working.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Tab replied, leaning around the corner to see if Bendo was still trying to convince the shickin roosters to lay for him. He was. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Fontagu. I can’t get him to speak.’

  Tab’s eyes narrowed. ‘Fontagu? You can’t
get Fontagu to speak? No, you can’t be serious.’

  ‘I am serious. I saw him, in his room. I knocked, and he opened the door, and sat back down, but didn’t say a word.’

  ‘Has he just received bad news?’ Tab asked. ‘You know, really shocking news?’

  ‘That’s just the thing,’ Philmon said. ‘He looked happy. His eyes were… It’s so hard to explain, but he looked like he was very, very happy. But I couldn’t get him to say a word, so I came to get you straight away. I thought you might know what to do.’

  ‘Is he still there?’

  ‘In his room? Yes. I told him I was coming to get you, and he seemed… well, excited, I guess.’

  Tab glanced around the corner again. Bendo was still crooning softly to the shickins, who seemed completely oblivious to his attentions.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and have a look at him.’

  They made good time through the narrow streets, and soon reached the boarding house where Fontagu kept his lodgings. Tab took the steps three at a time, with Philmon close behind. ‘Should I knock?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it’s still open.’

  Tab pushed the door, and it swung open with a small squeak. Over at his small desk in the corner sat Fontagu, with his back to the door. He didn’t turn around, or even flinch as they came in.

  ‘Fontagu, it’s me,’ Tab said gently. ‘And Philmon. We came to see if you’re all right.’ She padded across the floor and rested her hand on Fontagu’s shoulder. Still nothing. Then she looked at his face. Philmon had been right – he looked happy. He looked blissful. He seemed to be frozen in a state of delight.

  ‘Fontagu?’ she said again. ‘What’s going on?’

  Slowly Fontagu turned his head, until his eyes were staring deep into hers. He dropped his hand to the desk, which was cluttered with paper and quills and empty ink jars, and picked up a piece of parchment, which he handed to Tab, without his eyes shifting from hers.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, looking down at the parchment. She saw the Supreme Crest at the very top. And below that, a letter written in the finest calligraphy. ‘The writing’s all curly. It looks like it’s from Florian.’